Welcome to Jordan!

Every single person I've met since coming to Amman has said "Welcome to Jordan." People holler it at me as I walk by on the street. I suppose they are just very friendly, but it's starting to seem like some sort of vast conspiracy. Maybe I just have a sign on my back that says "Welcome Me."

We spent a few more days in Egypt around Dahab. We decide to climb Mt. Sinai for sunrise, which meant that we left at 11 pm and stumbled up the mountain rather than sleeping. It was surprisingly hot despite the altitude and almost total darkness. The trail ran through a camel holding area(for tourists too smart to walk up) in the moonlight and it was kind of surreal to be surrounded by an unknown number of mostly very sleepy camels. In fact the whole experience took on a kind of drugged feeling. Maybe I just wasn't drinking enough water. In fact I know I wasn't because when we got to the top, I was soaking wet from the effort and it became surprisingly cold. We had to rent a blanket that looked like it had been stolen from one of the camels to see us through until dawn. We were awakened by a choir of people with mostly Castillian accents singing in Hebrew "Shima Israel . . ." which made sense given the location. It felt very old testament and I was happy to discover that I would not have to carry any stone tablets down to the bottom. It made less sense when we discoverd that the choir was actually a group of Catholic seminarians, but the music was nice at least.

We did a jot more snorkelling and finished most of our winnings at the pub, although we did leave with 6 liters of drinking water, and headed towards Jordan. It took only 10 hours longer than expected. The bus ride was 90 minutes as advertised, and the ferry took only 3 hours instead of 2, however there was the small matter of the 5 hour wait before the ferry and the 2 hours after it arrived. If that doesn't add up, you more or less understand how we felt during the 12 hour, 120 mile journey. On top of it, I dropped 10 Dinar($15) on the ground getting out of the cab and our driver skillfully made it disappear.

Jordan has been more expensive than anticipated, but mostly worth it. Petra, which I had never heard of before planning this trip has been totally fantastic. The verse, which we see EVERYWHERE runs "The rose-red city half as old as time." In fact the city is only about 1900-2100 years old, which on this trip just qualifies it as oldish. However it looks incredibly ancient on account of being carved from soft sandstone. I was thinking I would like to see a convincing TV recreation of the place at it's heyday, but upon further consideration I've decided that it can't be done. I scarcely believe the real version. Rose-red also give the rocks short-shrift. They are mostly red but swirled with psychedelic tiger stripes of orange, brown and yellow. I continually found myself having to touch them to believe that they weren't painted on, but they are not.
Unfortunately the ancient Nabateans did not build any escalators, or if they did they have been lost to the ages. Consequently we had to do a rather ludicrous amount of hiking to see it all and I have gotten leg cramps that make me feel half as old as time myself(I'll be 25 this week after all). I also took a rather ludicrous amount of pictures, none of which will see the light of day until I get my camera cable from home.